


Protection

by UnshoddenShipper



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood and Violence, Excessive Swearing, Hurt/Comfort, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Protectiveness, if you could imagine that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3939880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnshoddenShipper/pseuds/UnshoddenShipper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Either in a non-Sgrub AU or post game on Alternia, Karkat managed to raise another revolution and, this time, it succeeds. Now, in theory, everyone is supposed to be equal now, regardless of blood color. They're even categorized by new terms to reinforce this - warm blood and cool blood instead of lowblood and highblood. But in practice there's still a strong anti-cool blood prejudice. A lot of people especially don't like that their new leader's pale quadrant is taken up by a former subjuggulator. So a few of them decide to take the matter into their own hands. [...]</p><p>An old fill for the Homestuck Kink Meme, from back when we were on Livejournal!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Protection

**Author's Note:**

> "pro·tec·tion   
>  /prəˈtekSH(ə)n/   
>  noun.   
>  Preventing someone or something from suffering harm or injury."

\- - - - - - -

Sometimes, swearing and screaming isn’t enough to express the anger you feel.

Sometimes, your anger sprints past rage, does a pirouette off the cliff of fury, falls past livid without a second glance and barrels into wrath like it was a giant circus tent- bending, stretching, embracing you here at the bottom of this cliff. But the anger is so strong it tears a hole in that circus tent, through the ground, and lands itself ass-backwards in Hell.

You’ve been there twice in your life. The first was when your Lusus died. This morning was the other.

You wipe the indigo blood off his hands, so he doesn’t have to look at it. They’re huge hands, you marvel. Fucking massive and powerful. Long like Vriska’s, but none of Vriska’s thin spidery bullshit- these are hands bred to rule, to command. They’re lax and soft in yours, years of no physical labor making them smooth, and trust making them easy to pull this way and that as you clean. You take care to rinse away all the lowblood- no, you recall distantly, of _warmblood_ \- under his formidable talons. Then you move slowly up his arms, dabbing with healing balm you’ve become so accustomed to during the uprising, the vinegary smell of it is soothing.

“You okay, bro?” He asks in a cracked whisper, and a growl bubbles in your chest, makes your teeth vibrate.

“Don’t talk, you fucking moron.”

“I can-”

“Just don’t, okay?” The growl is choked by some awful fucking thing in your protein chute; the constriction of grief, the infamous lump of despair.

“Karkat,” he says evenly, and your head snaps up in surprise. You’re always ‘bro’, ‘best friend’, ‘motherfucker’. You’re never Karkat.

His eyes catch yours and hold them there. “Karkat, it’s okay, man.”

“No it’s not!” You screech, from some weird emergency reserve of spite because two seconds ago you sure as hell didn’t have the energy to do more than whisper. “You’re not okay, Gamzee! This is not okay!” Your eyes rove his face; from the scratches and dark bruises, standing so starkly against hastily-cleaned skin that was supposed to have shitty facepaint all over it. Looking at them, your vascular organ is stretched yet another time today. He’s hurt. Bleeding. He had been so... so vulnerable. And you weren’t there.

The fuck kind of moirail **are** you?

“They weren’t gonna kill me, Karkat.”

“They damn well could’ve!”

“They wouldn’t’ve. Too much motherfuckin’ social backlash; press’d be up and all over it.”

You blink. Gamzee had a lot more of a clue than people thought.

“They hurt you,” you mutter, looking back to his arms and resuming.

“You ended that, motherfucker!” His laugh is quiet and dry, and he leans forward to rest those hands on your shoulders, forcing you to look at him. His smile is crooked and toothy, ears perking, and your poor vascular organ can hardly bear those eyes. Gamzee’s purple-grey eyes all haunted and clear, a little wet now. The muscles of your mouth struggle to move your (permanent, deepened) frown into a shy smirk.

"Motherfuckers just wantin' to frighten me off, I think," He continues, watching as you return to your work on him. 

"You're their leader, bro. I'm..." He trails off, shrugging loosely, making his hair bounce.

"I was a motherfuckin' subjuggulator."

"And **now** ," You punctuate it with the application of a bandage over his chest stitches, "You are my palemate."

\- - - - - - - - - -

_Something is off. The warmblood compound is still and hushed, expectant of something._

_Typically when emerging from your travelhut you are greeted by irritating admirers and questions about what to do about this or that- but none today. You walk slowly, sniffing the air, trying to ignore the incessant_ crunch, crunch _of your boots against the snow. Then, you hear it: a great whoop of voices, dull and distant, to the right of you and hidden past the huts. Your legs are sprinting before you can think._

_A great circle of trolls has gathered, men and women, packed thickly together and making all kinds of uproarious noise. They are wide-set and strong, with large horns and broad faces and heads taller than you; so easily recognized as former lowbloods they don’t need the abandoned caste emblems across their chests. You can’t see what all the excitement was about, and it doesn’t occur to you to use your Big Leader Voice to part the sea- you are back to Before, as a mutant, trying not to draw attention to yourself as you weave between these larger bodies._

_In the center, held in place by three full grown adults, is a bleeding, battered,_ snarling _Gamzee, surrounded by a flurry of fangs and horns._

_It’s like a feeding frenzy- any time an opening comes, somebody’s there to take a swipe at him. Talons tearing at his arms, shredding his shirt- his horns being yanked and shoved roughly- chest kicked at over and over-_

_-Your mouth is full of blood, teeth sinking into the nearest attacker’s throat-_

_It’s a blur of motion and time, and the crowd is silent to you- all you can hear are the pained snarls of your moirail, the convulsions of your vascular organ. Pump. Pump. Pump. The dying breath of the troll in your grasp seems to unleash it all like a dam falling to ruin; time speeds up and sound swells around you and you take a deep breath, wrenching yourself away. He falls all in a heap, snow crunching beneath the weight, everything is fast and loud and what the fuck are they still doing standing over Gamzee?_

_You’re over him in the time it takes you to draw breath. Fuck diplomacy, FUCK leadership. Your hands are stretched to exaggerate the claws at your sides, your teeth are bared and dripping dark red blood onto the snow, and you are daring someone to step forward._

_They all step away in a mass exodus, eyes wide._

\- - - - - - - -

You finish with tending to his arms and wrap clean cloth where necessary. Done. His bones have been set, gashes stitched, and he reeks of the thick healing balm. You’ve both become adequately accomplished in the ways of first-aid over the past few years, which could sound boastful except that it’s not by any stretch of the imagination.

“Thank you,” he says softly.

You grunt, closing the medical case.

“No, bro,” he insists, leaning over to get your attention fully. “Thank you.”

The shy smile is back on your face, and you look down at one of his great big hands. You watch as he moves it to rest and curl around one of yours.

You turn it so that they’re resting palm-to-palm, and squeeze briefly.

He squeezes back.


End file.
